DDO Weekly Development Activities: September 11
We give you another batch of weekly development activities for Dungeons and Dragons Online. It’s nice to see that the guys behind the MMO has been working really hard to improve the game for their community even if some of the development activities may have been lingering in the list for the longest time now. But still, you gotta admire these people who work tirelessly to bring something new and improved to the game amidst the tough challenges. So, we’ll quit blabbing about how good and determined they are and we will now hook you up DDO’s weekly development activities for September 11.
In Q&A
General
- NEW – The Spell Selection window should no longer crash the client.
- NEW – Some quest rewards were becoming permanently ransacked; this is now fixed.
- The tavern in Necropolis is now named “One Foot Inn” and has a new flavor NPC to relate the tale of how it got the name.
Monsters
- Dead mummies will no longer cause despair.
- Charmed mummies will no longer cause despair in allied players.
- The Warrior of the Six is now correctly tagged as Neutral Evil.
Items
- Repeating crossbows should once again be functioning properly.
- NEW – If you have a shield and a wand/scroll/thrown-weapon equipped and are blocking, in most cases the shield will now take item wear, not the right hand item.
- All adamantine weapons have been given a boost to their Hardness. This change will affect all existing weapons as well as newly created adamantine weapons.
- The new brigandine armor introduced in the Twilight Forge Module will now appear properly on Drow.
The full list awaits after the jump!
We give you another batch of weekly development activities for Dungeons and Dragons Online. It’s nice to see that the guys behind the MMO has been working really hard to improve the game for their community even if some of the development activities may have been lingering in the list for the longest time now. But still, you gotta admire these people who work tirelessly to bring something new and improved to the game amidst the tough challenges. So, we’ll quit blabbing about how good and determined they are and we will now hook you up DDO’s weekly development activities for September 11.
Items in Q&A
General
- NEW – The Spell Selection window should no longer crash the client.
- NEW – Some quest rewards were becoming permanently ransacked; this is now fixed.
- The tavern in Necropolis is now named “One Foot Inn” and has a new flavor NPC to relate the tale of how it got the name.
Monsters
- Dead mummies will no longer cause despair.
- Charmed mummies will no longer cause despair in allied players.
- The Warrior of the Six is now correctly tagged as Neutral Evil.
Items
- Repeating crossbows should once again be functioning properly.
- NEW – If you have a shield and a wand/scroll/thrown-weapon equipped and are blocking, in most cases the shield will now take item wear, not the right hand item.
- All adamantine weapons have been given a boost to their Hardness. This change will affect all existing weapons as well as newly created adamantine weapons.
- The new brigandine armor introduced in the Twilight Forge Module will now appear properly on Drow.
NPCs
- NEW – Kaltrop, a student of monster behavior, has taken to frequenting the One Foot Inn. Kaltrop has some interesting information for adventurers regarding the special abilities of the Necropolis’ inhabitants.
Quests
Under Development
Performance
- The landscape renderer has been overhauled to provide better performance (especially load times). In addition, the new landscape engine enables huge draw distances that were not possible before.
- The overall frame rate has been improved and ‘hitching’ reduced.
- Avatars and monsters are now a bit brighter than other objects (the intensity depends upon the environment and lighting conditions).
- Overall bandwidth of the game will be reduced another 1-3%, and certain problematic dungeons and laggy areas will be significantly improved by 20-50% (when your client gets flooded with information about objects in your local area).
UI Improvements
- The text on the XP bar has been clarified to make it more obvious that you have not lost the XP you were accruing toward your bonus AP when you die and get an XP debt while you are working toward bonus action points.
- You will now get chat feedback in the combat window when you hit someone with a non-damaging spell (like fear or slow).
- NEW – The “New Mail” icon will now appear on the Focus Orb even if it is minimized.
- NEW – The “To” and “Subject” line of the Compose Mail UI no longer accept carriage returns.
General
- Phantasmal killer is now a fear effect.
- The Silver Flame has recognized that the brothers stationed in Taverns have been casting an inferior version of Restoration. From now on, the spell cast in taverns will remove 1 negative level in addition to all the other Restoration effects.
- Players will no longer get stuck while dismounting from ladders.
- We are pleased to announce the addition of the /showhelmet <on | off> command which can be used to hide your helmet graphic.
- We are improving the combat/damage feedback mechanism. This will not only eliminate “false” hits where the target would flinch but no attack roll would take place, but also give better feedback as to the strength of the hit.
- When you successfully swap a spell, you will now get an alert telling you that it worked.
- NEW – Poison dart and poison grenade traps will now actually poison you instead of doing poison hp damage.
- Lava Cam! When your camera is in lava, it now looks more like it’s in lava, as opposed to water.
- Made some small tweaks to our avatar animations. For example, human female’s wrists won’t twist in the dual weapon combo attack, dwarven arms won’t over-extend when they use an axe to cleave, etc.
Monsters
- Spiders
- NEW – Some mid- and high-level (mostly CR 7 and up) spiders have new stronger poisons.
- NEW – Most spiders on the hard and elite settings have had their attack damage reduced significantly, particularly those on the elite setting.
- Widow type spiders will once again shoot functional webs.
- Some ogres have been eating their veggies and will be able to see and hear better than they could before.
- Several bow wielding enemies will now shoot various energy arrows like flaming arrows or cold arrows. These will do the typical piercing damage (1d6 and up) in addition to various amounts of energy damage.
- NEW – Several resourceful enemies have begun using various alchemical substances in battle. In most cases, these will affect players as energy damage over time.
- NEW – Vermin are no longer immune to stunning blow.
- Elemental Empathy will work properly on Earth Elementals that have used their Earthgrab ability.
- NEW – More powerful versions of Mummy Rot are now labeled accordingly: Pernicious Mummy Rot is more dangerous than regular Mummy Rot, and Virulent Mummy Rot is even more lethal.
- Female humanoid villains will no longer charge into melee range if armed with spells or bows.
- We are fixing an issue with the death animations of Arcane Skeletons. They will no longer “eat collectables” they should be creating.
Combat
- NEW – All enemy trips and knockdowns now have dual saves (an initial save and a secondary save). Most give you an ability modifier check for the initial save to determine whether or not you fall. This is usually your Strength or Dexterity modifier, whichever is greater on your character. Some knockdowns like grease give a reflex save as the initial save. Once you fall down, your secondary save checks will occur every two seconds and are versus your balance skill to determine when you stand back up.
Spells
- Resist Energy is now available for clerics, paladins, rangers, and wizards. Protection from Energy is now available to Rangers, Wizards, and Clerics. This change allows these classes to cast Protection From Energy and Resist Energy the same way a sorcerer can, by memorizing a single spell and then choosing which damage type to ward against. The days of memorizing several Resist Energy: (Element) are no more!
Skills & Abilities
- Bards can now activate their singing abilities while moving! The activation time on their singing abilities has been reduced significantly as well. An animation glitch has also been fixed!
- The description for the Paladin’s Lay on Hands ability has been corrected to better describe the amount of healing/damage that the ability does.
Via DDO Forums